Electronic Arts Sports and Collegiate Licensing Company have settled all claims brought against them by plaintiffs in the Sam Keller and Ed O’Bannon lawsuit over the use of college athletes’ names, images and likenesses, according to a court filing today.

Terms of the settlements are confidential until presented to the court for preliminary approval, the filing said. “This settlement does not affect Plaintiffs’ claims against Defendant National Collegiate Athletic Association,” the filing stated.

Meanwhile, the NCAA is hiring more lawyers and vowing to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. All of this is pretty amazing when you consider the organization could have settled this in the beginning for a relative pittance.

It won’t surprise me, if O’Bannon makes it that far, to learn that the NCAA seriously lobbies Congress for an antitrust exemption. The NCAA has just started to fight, by damn!

I just do not understand what the NCAA is doing on this case. It seems pretty clear they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. A reasonable response would have been to figure out a way to make the law suit go away and then alter your future behavior to prevent the same claims from later coming forward again. Of course (assuming they had competent counsel) this may be another case of where the client refuses to listen to the very counsel they hired to represent them, which is an all too common problem in this country. Oh well that is where billable hours come from 🙂

Not defending the NCAA, but don’t you think their rationale of not settling was they viewed it as too dangerous a precedent? Not that I agree, but it seems at least semi-defensible. It’s a reasonable proposition that a settlement of former players leads to action by active players. No?

Granted, if O’Bannon was swept under the rug a few years ago, they wouldn’t have gotten around to amending the complaint to include TV rights. So, it’s hard to defend that angle.

Scholastic sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, and that’s before parents run their kids down to Dicks to keep Nike and UnderArmor in business. Some of the high schools here in North Carolina pay their boys basketball and football coaches supplements in excess of $50,000. ESPN shows high school sports now. I’ve attended high school games in Texas and Oklahoma in stadiums that rival the one at Western Carolina.

It’s exactly same dynamic – fewer dollars per head, to be sure, but also a hell of a lot more heads.

Again, I can see the differences. Pretending there are no similarities? Well, that’s because you’re more interested in arguing than talking.

Quote Of The Day

“Being a student at Georgia and playing ball, I’ve definitely grown, widened my horizons and experienced things I never thought I would. I feel like I’ve grown on and off the field, and the university prepared me for that. I’ve done some awesome things and met some awesome people. I’ll definitely be back to finish my schoolwork, because that was a big priority for me and my family and weighed heavily on my decision. I know football won’t last forever. It’ll be great to come back and get that degree, so I can tell my kids about it one day.” — Roquan Smith, AJ-C, 3/7/18